We cannot genuinely meditate without facing the perplexing pains of our world and our personal lives: a medical diagnosis, the loss of a loved one, the birth of a child or falling in love or a large-scale atrocity. These are lifechanging and so, if we fail to integrate them, we resist the unfolding of life’s sacred mystery. If we continued meditating but stayed resistant, in denial or rage, meditation would become an individualistic thing, an escape route, a way to “well-being” rather than the more costly “fullness of life”. Meditators in the same community will have different political or moral opinions about the dilemmas of our time. (“A community of faith composed of people of different beliefs”.) What they share, deeper than differences, comes from their unity. This bestows the contemplative capacity to face life’s challenges and to listen to one other squarely and directly. We
may disagree on solutions, but we will agree where the hope for healing lies: in the singular point of unity where the ordinary and the transcendent meet.
The perplexing pains of our world
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